


Camera Shy

by michi_thekiller, miss_moberg, PrettyArbitrary



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anal Sex, Collaboration, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff and Smut, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:26:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michi_thekiller/pseuds/michi_thekiller, https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_moberg/pseuds/miss_moberg, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrettyArbitrary/pseuds/PrettyArbitrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sherlock discovers that John has no photos of himself, he launches on a campaign to visually document every remarkable facet of John and their growing relationship.  Every sweating, kinky, doe-eyed facet.</p><p> </p><p>  <i> This is a large collaborative project for  beautiful <a href="http://archiaart.tumblr.com">Archia's</a> birthday, featuring 24 artists and 3 writers! </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deuxexmycroft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deuxexmycroft/gifts).



> _This is a birthday present for the beautiful and incredibly talented[Archia](http://archiaart.tumblr.com)/deuxexmycroft, consisting of the collaborative efforts of 24 artists and 3 writers. Archia is amazing, and we wanted an equally amazing project to match. I would like to say a deep heartfelt thank you to everyone who has dedicated their time and talents to this project, every single one of you made this possible. Happy Birthday, Archia! Look at how many people love you!_  
>  ~Michi

For a man hunched over a frozen corpse, John looked fantastic. Sherlock hadn’t realised anybody could look good in forensic photography, but the light caught John just right: brought out that lovely hidden curve of his cheekbone, turned his eyelashes to sunlight and his eyes to the murky shade of a winter lake. His blazer stretched appealingly tight across his shoulders, and what his position did for the jeans wrapped around his arse couldn’t be denied.

Sherlock spent a good 20 minutes or so just looking at John, this image of him caught unawares at the edge of a crime scene photo. The glossy plastic was smooth underneath his fingertips. Sherlock realised, then, that he had never seen a photo of John that wasn’t taken when he was deliberately sitting for a portrait.

Was that right? Could John really have so few photos of himself? He’d been in the military, weren’t soldiers practically contractually obligated to over-document their downtime? Or--Sherlock felt his eyes narrow--had the evidence simply been kept from him?

What did John have to hide?

Two days of surreptitious ransacking of John’s belongings later, Sherlock concluded that John had _nothing_ to hide. He had, in fact, almost no photographic documentation of his existence at all. He had an obligatory picture on his hospital ID, a few paparazzi shots in the papers (all of them underneath some painfully forced-reference headline), and grand total of two (2) photos of himself on his blog.

This state of affairs could not be allowed to stand.

He brought the issue up a few days later, on a Sunday afternoon. John was in the sitting room; Sherlock could hear him, clacking away with his two-fingered typing. The mere sound of it was exhausting.

“John, I want to show you something,” Sherlock said, presenting the image for inspection.

“Oh, god.” John’s nose wrinkled up at the sight of the photo. “What’re you doing with that? You said the angle was wrong to see anything useful.”

"I don't know. I quite like it," Sherlock said. He considered the picture in his hand. "Maybe I'll get a frame for it."

“We're not putting a picture of me next to a body on display in our living room. It upsets company." John turned back to his keyboard and poked it with an air of finality.

John had the most unreasonable objections sometimes. (There was quite a noticeable body in the photo, of course, but it was not the one that John was thinking of. ) Sherlock frowned. “What _are_ you typing at so laboriously?”

“A new blog.” John sat back with undoubtedly premature satisfaction to regard his screen. “The other one is so…” His face twisted up. “Commercial these days. I'm trying to think of a name, though." He leaned forward and typed something.

Sherlock glanced over his shoulder. "Is that a Bond reference? Obvious."

"Oh, it's taken." John slumped in creative disappointment.

"Of course it’s taken.” Sherlock moved in to occupy the space freed up by John’s sway-back. It may have been his imagination, but the air felt warm. Perhaps he should experiment sometime to see if John left a human-detectable heat trail. He was certainly warm enough in bed. “That and any other references to Bond movies. I know that, and I don't even like Bond."

"How about -- oh."

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "And don't try to make a pun, they're never half as clever as you think." John typed. "No, that sounds stupid. And that doesn't even make sense.” He pointed. “You spelled it wrong."

John hunched and typed furiously.

“Iwearridiculousjumpers.tumblr.com,” Sherlock suggested helpfully. “Weareoutofmilk.tumblr.com. Myflatmateisagenius.tumblr.com. Ilikemyflatmatesbig--”

“Shh!” John shushed him, quite rudely. He was typing mostly gibberish, as far as Sherlock could see.

Honestly. “How many blogs does one man need, anyway?" As if the first one didn’t suck up enough of John’s time and attention as it was.

"It's Tumblr,” John muttered at his hands, still in his defensive hunch. “It's different.”

"You just want to follow that Watson's Wenches blog, don't you?" Sherlock said.

John’s cheeks pinkened slightly. “Go cut up a corpse or something, you're bothering me."

"Boring. Did that earlier.” Sherlock leaned low into John’s personal space, enjoying the smell of his hair. He hadn’t showered yet today; it smelt more of John than usual. "You're missing an e."

John shot Sherlock a smouldering blue glare, and then turned back to punch a few more letters.

"’Go away’... Haha, very humorous, John."

"And look! It's available!" John said, far too happily for Sherlock’s liking.

And thus, [goawaysherlock.tumblr.com ](http://goawaysherlock.tumblr.com)came into being.

 

* * *

 

Two hours later, John was still at it. Sherlock had gone away and come back again twice. John barely even knew how to tinker with his layout. What could be so enthralling about a Tumblr?

He peeked over John’s shoulder again. “Hmmm.” As he’d thought: the default theme. John hadn’t even changed the colours. He was scrolling through files on his computer, clearly looking for an icon photo. Oh, anything but that horrible, vacuously smiling blog photo.

“If you have so many opinions,” John snapped without looking up, “you should use them on your own blog.”

Sherlock could fix this. The camera was around here somewhere...ah. He paused in the kitchen doorway to adjust the f-stop and exposure, and then lifted it to focus on John. “John. Smile.”

John looked up just in time for the shutter to click.

“What are you doing?!” Sherlock sidestepped as John launched out of his chair at him. “Give me that!”

"Obviously, I'm taking pictures of you." He danced back another step, holding the camera high so John couldn’t reach it. He snapped another photo, just in case it got something interesting. “So you can have a better photo than that catastrophe of a blog avatar you’ve been using.”

“I don’t _want_ a better blog photo, Sherlock! I don’t want any pictures at all!”

“Then I fail to see the point in starting another blog.” He pirouetted easily out of John’s reach, amused by his attempts at snatching it away. “If you’re starting another blog about your personal life, why not include a photo of yourself as well?”

“One, I want it to be private, and two, I hate having my picture taken, it never comes out right. Now stop it!” John said. Sherlock reached up with his other hand to tilt the camera down and aim it at John. John ducked back, a hand flung up in front of his face.

A chase ensued. Sherlock pressed the shutter haphazardly as he pursued an elusive-yet-loudly-protesting John around the room. John was not making himself an easy target, pulling out various pieces of furniture to block Sherlock’s path and tossing various objects in his general direction.

“Get away from me!” John cried, as Sherlock snapped a closeup of his forehead and hairline.

“You’re my boyfriend. Isn’t this something boyfriends do?”

John stopped, stunned, as he often was, by the usage of the saccharine relationship term. Success. Sherlock took a picture.

He could practically see John’s hackles go back up. “No!” John snapped. “Last I checked, molesting their significant other with a camera was _not_ something boyfriends did! At least not if they wanted to stay a boyfriend!”

Sherlock straightened, putting on a pout. “I was only trying to-”

"Sherlock, watch out-!"

The leg of a chair rolled under his heel as he stepped back. Sherlock landed with a sound thud and a loud “ugh.” The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on the floor, getting a unique perspective on the crack that had been developing in their ceiling.

“The camera isn’t hurt, but I may have broken something,” Sherlock declared to the room at large.

"Should have been paying attention to where you were walking instead of harassing me," said an upside-down John, standing over him. “Nothing’s broken. Stop being so dramatic.”

“I could have a concussion,” Sherlock returned. He raised a hand expectantly for John to help him regain his lost footing and dignity. “You're a doctor. Help me.”

“No. I think this will be a good lesson for you,” John said. One of his eyebrows was raised in that way that turned his forehead into lopsided Celtic knots.

“You have a terrible bedside manner,” Sherlock decided, letting his hand drop heavily, resigned to John’s utter heartlessness.

“I'm nice to patients who didn’t earn their injury by chasing me around the room with a camera.”

“My head hurts,” Sherlock moaned in his most pitiful voice. “I’m beginning to feel nauseous.”

John sighed and began to lean in, presumably to better assess Sherlock’s pupils for signs of a concussion. Sherlock quickly raised the camera and snapped a photo. Knotwork acquired.

“Sherlock!” John spluttered. He straightened up. “You can get yourself up.” With a noise of disgust, he turned and walked away, abandoning Sherlock, left all by himself on the floor.

“You know you’re being ridiculous, John,” Sherlock called after him. “John?”

Silence. A lonely, unanswering void.

Sherlock sighed, deep and mournful. John was so cruel to him. It was wholly unfair.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

  
  

  

  
  

  
 

  

photos courtesy of **[tracionn](tracionn.tumblr.com)**

  
**  
** Sherlock's blog is [here](http://acameraobscure.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's art is by the amazing [fishsicle!!](http://fishsicle.tumblr.com)
> 
> In case you missed it: [Sherlock's blog](http://acameraobscure.tumblr.com)  
> [Visit John at his,](http://goawaysherlock.tumblr.com) but don't try and tell him you know who he is! And definitely do _not_ tell him what Sherlock's up to.

 

* * *

 

Tension stretched across John’s shoulders while he made tea, his neck prickling with the sensation of eyes upon him. Paranoia? The flat seemed empty, but John knew better, especially against this particular adversary.

Safety was but an illusion.

Military instincts kept him in a balanced stance while he retrieved the sugar from the cabinet. He was calm. Casual. Nevermind his frequent darting glances back into the living room. If he could just reach the sofa before he was intercepted, he would be safe. He’d keep his back to the wall, with a clear line of sight to the doors. He couldn’t be caught unawares there. He spilled a line of steaming tea onto his fingers and cursed, switching hands to suck at the burned spot. A sharp, speculative gaze lingered on him. He could feel it just out of sight, observing his every intently nonchalant movement.

Not far to go now. He was as cool as a mountain stream. Like a deer with the safety of the forest in sight. He wasn’t bothered. His stalker didn’t need to know that he could feel his clothes being peeled away inside that insidious imagination. That he could imagine the soft wool against his face as it cleared his body, the tug of buttons pushed through holes and undone till his shift unfurled around him and left him exposed... He rolled his shoulder and cleared his throat. _Focus. Don’t let your fingers twitch. Don’t give it away._

He paused by his chair. A newspaper lay folded and waiting on the arm, a polite gesture from his flatmate. No, not just flatmate, his...More-than-just-a-flatmate. If his brain could have coughed, it would have. Years of determined, insistent heterosexuality tended to do that to a person’s brain. (Said brain had no problem imagining said person in sweaty bedroom antics with very male More-than-just-a-flatmate, however, but that was neither here nor there.) John was still coming to terms with the term. He had _been_ a boyfriend before ( many, many times before), but the experience of actually _having_ one himself was something else entirely. Still, the thought of it put a warmth in his chest and soothed the tight ache from his jaw. Thinking about Sherlock had that effect on him sometimes. Of course, thinking about Sherlock also put murderous intent in him sometimes, so it was a bit touch-and-go, really.

The paper was already folded open to the latest update on the new NHS policy. John tilted his head a bit to read the second line, blowing absently on his still-steaming tea.

In that moment of distraction, his attacker struck.

John jerked back from the flash going off in his face, cursing as hot tea splattered down the front of his jumper and jeans. “Fucking _ambush!_ You prick, I should’ve known!”

He took another step back, meaning to catch his footing and go on the offensive, but his armchair was there, the damn thing, and he tumbled into its arms instead. He flung an arm out to stable himself, just barely in time to save the upholstery from being doused with a nearly-full cup of tea. “Bloody--...Stop!”

 _Whir-click._ Flash. _Whir-click._ Flash. One after another. Sherlock stalked closer, blithely ignoring John’s free arm waving in impotent rage. He was as bad as the paparazzi that hounded them on a regular basis. He was as bad as that Milton Lester, Kitty Riley’s personal photographer, who lay in wait for them in the alley beside Angelo’s and hid in the bins outside of Tesco’s.

In a word, Sherlock was shameless.

This came as a surprise to no one.

“Are you going to sit and let me take a picture of you?” Sherlock asked, peering down at him through the lens of the camera, which stared at John like a giant bug’s eye.

“No!” John said, making a swipe for the camera. Sherlock stepped back to avoid it, forcing John to collapse back into the armchair.

“Then I don't plan to stop,” Sherlock said. He pressed the shutter button again.

John squirmed around till he could get his feet down on the floor. “If you don’t put that camera down, I will knock you down and forcibly take it from you. ”

Sherlock looked at him defiantly. Then he snapped another picture.

Mouth pressed into a thin line, John set his tea carefully down on the floor next to his chair. In the next moment, the tea went flying as John did too, launching himself at Sherlock.

They hit the floor with a crashing of limbs. An unpleasant, numbing tingle shot up through John’s fingers and toes. They both gasped as the collision drove the air from their lungs, but even with the wind knocked out of him, Sherlock’s finger still had enough function to keep clicking pictures.

“Fucking-! Give me that!” John rasped. A mighty struggle for the camera ensued, John hugging it to himself like a rugby ball while Sherlock clung to it stubbornly with his obnoxiously big hands.

“Sherlock! Give. It. To. Me!” John cried as they played tug-of-war with the camera between them.

“I’ve...heard that before,” Sherlock quipped annoyingly, still clinging on to the camera, albeit a bit out of breath. “Although...in...a slightly different context!”

John scrambled up on his knees, and with a mighty _“Grargh!”_ sort of noise and a great heave, he managed to finally wrench the camera away out of sheer determination alone. He sat back on Sherlock’s hips, triumphant, keeping the git pinned while he started deleting photos. How the hell did you get to the photo gallery in this…? He squeezed his eyes shut as the flash went off in his face again.

“If you’re going to delete photos, you could start by taking your finger off the shutter.” Sherlock slipped his hands behind his head, looking heartlessly amused with John’s frustrated attempts to work the piece of technology.

“What? Oh.” John tilted the camera towards himself and carefully slid his finger to a spot less populated with buttons. “How do you work this thing?” he muttered, not needing any answers, especially not from his stalker of a boyfriend.

“I could show you how to work it,” Sherlock offered, with a bloody awful cat-in-the-cream smile.

“Was that supposed to be funny? I don’t need _your_ sort of help, ta.” John poked at buttons and fumbled through the resulting menus, feeling a bit like a rat in a maze.

“You obviously don’t know what you’re doing and you do need my help.” Sherlock rested his hands lightly on John’s thighs, rubbing small circular patterns into his jeans with his thumbs that John barely felt. Just barely. “I am more experienced than you.”

John snorted. “In what? Sex or photography?”

Sherlock bucked his hips up against John with an evil smirk. “Both.”

Caught off-guard again, John tipped forward over Sherlock, catching himself on one hand with the front of his jeans firmly in touch with the groin of Sherlock’s expensive trousers. He glanced down to where they came together.

“More experienced than me?” John said, mouth twitching with amusement. “I’ll have you know…”

“Oh, yes, yes, three continents, spare us the gory details,” Sherlock countered impatiently. “All your previous encounters have been with women. When it comes to men, you are woefully...lost.” His hands inched up further on John’s thighs, stroking the crease of them now. One hand slid up, fingers sliding along the border of John’s jeans. John could feel Sherlock’s fingertips dancing over the thin material of his shirt, underneath his jumper. He could feel Sherlock’s body heat seeping through, all the places they were pressed together.

“And you?” John asked. “Mr. This-is-all-transport is a gay sex expert?” He grinned down at Sherlock, making no attempt to hide his disbelief.

“I’m a genius, John. Sex isn’t that difficult to understand.” The eyeroll claimed its own physical space. John thought he could see sparks go up where it collided in mid-air with the sinister emanations being put out by that lecherous grin.

“You can research sex all you want.” John poked at the permanent little gaps between buttonholes in Sherlock’s gamely straining shirt. Sherlock must know how tempting those little glimpses of smooth pale skin were, or else he would’ve bought shirts that fit by now. “It takes practise to get good at it.”

“Yes, I’ll take sex tips from you, the man who’s had seven different girlfriends in the span of nine months.” Sherlock’s broad hands fanned out to slide up and down John’s thighs, creating a warm friction peppered with gentle squeezes.

“That doesn’t mean- _oh_.” The clever hands on his thighs caught in the crease where leg met hip and pulled John down against a hardening cock. John could feel the heat radiating through all the layers of their clothes. He lost his breath like Sherlock had just sealed their mouths together and sucked it from him. It was a simple rub of their clothed pricks; why did it feel like he was sixteen and ready to hump until he came?

“Remember,” Sherlock murmured, mouth suddenly close to John’s ear, “I’m a scientist. I know the human body, each muscle, tendon, ligament, and blood vessel. I know pressure points and erogenous zones. I know where to touch you where you’ll feel it in your dick. I know what the twitch of a muscle means, the increase in your pulse. I can feel it when I wrap my hand around your cock. I don’t have to hear you beg in my ear to know when you’re about to come. I’ll know when your balls tighten and rise, when your breathing stops, when your body arches up to push your dick into my hand.”

His hands slipped back to wrap around John’s buttocks and tug him tighter against Sherlock. John couldn’t help squirming, caught between the words and the squeeze to his arse. “I can make you come so hard, you’ll forget how to form words. I know all this just by observing you. All I need to know is your body, John, and I know it. I’ve been watching it for a long time, and I’d say that yes, by now, I am a sex expert when it comes to you.”

John couldn’t catch his breath. He couldn’t look away from Sherlock, wound up too tight to move in whatever Sherlock had done with his voice, the images he’d conjured. If he moved...it felt like he might unleash something he didn’t know how to handle.

Sherlock kissed him, sweet and deep, the fingers of one hand trailing through the edge of John’s hairline. Yes. John parted his lips, because it made sense, just now it was the only thing that made sense, the softness of Sherlock’s lips, the slick heat of his tongue, the taste of him…

Their mouths pressed against one another, their lips and tongues moving wetly against each other, John was dimly aware of Sherlock gently prying the camera from his hands and setting it aside on the carpet. He let it happen, his hips pressing against Sherlock’s as John rubbed their bodies together. He didn’t care what was happening as long as Sherlock kept up that thing with his _tongue_.

John didn’t resist when Sherlock pushed up to roll them over, arms wrapping around John in a possessive embrace. The weight of Sherlock’s body upon him, pressing him into the carpet, the heat and bulge of his hardening cock rubbing sweet friction against John’s own. A moan escaped John, slipping out from deep within, a sort of release of the hot desire that was quickly building up inside of him. Sherlock muffled the sound with his tongue, long fingers slipping up to tug at the short strands of John’s hair. His whole body rolled with one sinuous, smooth motion, rocking the two of them together. John clutched at his shoulders and drew his knees up to make room for Sherlock between his legs, wanting the heat and weight and scent of him to stay right where it was.

And then it was gone.

Sherlock quickly pushed himself up with one hand and scooped the camera with the other, scrambling to his feet. He then jogged off into the other room, leaving John blinking at the ceiling. By the time John pushed himself up onto his elbows, Sherlock’s long legs had already carried him away, before John could even get to his feet.

“Stay right where you are, John! We can get back to that just as soon as I’ve got these safely downloaded!”

Murder. Murder murder murder.

Now where the fuck had he left his gun?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's art is by the wonderful [meetingyourmaker](http://meetingyourmaker.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art). She's fairly new to fandom and incredibly talented! Go on and give her a follow!
> 
> As always, [Sherlock's blog.](http://acameraobscure.tumblr.com)

 

 **re·la·tion·ship**  
riˈlāSHənˌSHip/  
 _noun_

the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.

 _synonyms:_ connection, relation, association, link, correlation, correspondence parallel, alliance, bond, interrelation, interconnection

 

* * *

 

When Sherlock closed his eyes and thought of John, that first night replayed against his eyelids. The night lit intermittently by police flashers; John’s head tipped sidewise with those wry forehead wrinkles cast in flickering blue shadow; John’s eyes the gleaming black of a winter lake.

If Sherlock had the power, he would have frozen that moment in time and kept it forever.

That first night, when John had met his eyes over the bamboo basket of steaming _xiaolong bao_ , giggling like a schoolboy around a mouthful of beef and broccoli, and Sherlock had snorted tea up into his sinuses, there’d already been nothing they needed to say.

Months of cases and takeaway dinners followed, Sherlock quietly basking in their slowly growing closeness, the decreasing distance between two men in a darkened cab. There were the quiet nights at home in front of the fire because Sherlock had blown out the windows with a “contained” experiment that left them still picking bits of shattered glass out of the carpet months later. There was companionable telly, bonding over awful late-night talk shows with paternity testing and Man or Woman? guessing and is-he-cheating-on-me-with-his-sister's-fiance with John lying sidewise on the sofa crippled with laughter while Sherlock shouted at an unhearing studio audience.

And then there was the time Sherlock had surfaced from his Mind Palace to find John asleep on his shoulder on the sofa, the repeating jingle from the DVD menu of John’s latest movie obsession burned into his mind as background noise.

When _hadn’t_ they been in a relationship? Did their first declared ‘date’ as a couple count for more than celebratory post-case dinners where a starved and triumphant Sherlock ordered half the menu? Or a stakeout with John huddled around a mid-afternoon cuppa like a warming fire and Sherlock bent low, ostensibly to peer through a dirty window but really so that he could keep looking at John’s charmingly red nose? And what about the romantic walks through a moonlit park while they searched for discarded pantyhose and lubricant from a string of rapes in the North London area?

So it wasn’t what most people thought of when they thought of dating. Most people were agonisingly boring.

Romance was a crime scene, _fleur-de-lis_ wallpaper and berber carpet splattered with telltale flowers of blood. It was John stirring the sugar into Sherlock’s tea in the morning, with the same hand that had fired a gun the night before. It was bickering over whether or not one could perform dissections of necrotic severed limbs upon the kitchen table, and savage battles of rolled-up newspapers to determine who had power of the remote control for the evening.

Their first kiss went like this: they had come home from a case, more sleep-deprived than usual. John had gotten 5 cumulative hours of sleep over a period of three days--5 hours and 15 minutes, to be precise, if one counted the time he’d spent asleep on his feet in Lestrade’s office. Sherlock had gotten precisely one hour, parcelled out in 15 minute increments over that period of time. He’d had to be dragged to bed like a man drugged. John had pulled the blankets up around him, and in a momentary lapse of all brain function, dropped a soft kiss upon his cheek. Sherlock, not entirely asleep, turned and smudged their mouths together.

They didn’t talk about it afterwards.

They’d awakened on the sofa a few mornings later, having fallen asleep arguing over the relative merits of an Edgar Wright movie marathon, and exactly how ill-advised it would be to start one at 11 pm. Morning found them with John’s nose squashed against Sherlock’s pulse, Sherlock’s cheek resting against ruffled blond hair, shielding John from the worst of the bright early light that had dared to wake them.

They ate breakfast together, each on their own side of the table but with legs stretched out and feet brushing as they shifted and reached for their tea, for the paper, just to work out kinks. The quiet was a warm blanket around their shoulders, and lasted to the dregs of John’s very boring, very soggy cornflakes when Sherlock had set the paper down and reached across to weave his fingers in with John’s.

The moments that mattered most were the moments when nothing remarkable was happening.

 

* * *

 

John had been poking at the keyboard for the past thirty minutes, the novelty of the new blog still asserting its hold over him. His face was the very picture of utter focus: brow scrunched with concentration, the tip of his thoughtful pink tongue occasionally peeking out between his lips.

He didn’t even notice Sherlock taking a photo.

 

 

 

John had finally figured out [how to add his own icon](http://goawaysherlock.tumblr.com/post/69517337140/it-took-me-a-while-but) today, and judging by his smug expression, it was proving popular. He had [figured out tags](http://goawaysherlock.tumblr.com/post/69423285692/a-moment-of-triumph) only yesterday, a personal victory that, while he had not directly admitted it to Sherlock, had been made obvious by the quiet _“yes!”_ muttered happily under his breath. And now it seemed the ask system was another thing to add to the list. The moment John had returned from Tesco’s and unpacked groceries, he’d planted himself in his armchair and checked his blog.

Sherlock felt this was all a bit unfair. So many unknown people and a website were hoarding John’s attention while his flatmate and _boyfriend_ was sitting patiently across from him, observing and getting his fill of John’s concentrated face, heartlessly ignored. The situation was a simple enough fix. Sherlock rose from his seat to stride across the room, leaning in to press a tender kiss to John’s forehead. It was the sort of romantic gesture that usually earned him the adulation that he deserved. He hovered, waiting for John to look up at him with adoration shining in those dark blue eyes.

John’s reply was a distracted, “Mm,” not on any list of acceptable acknowledgements of displays of affection. Sherlock was certain it didn’t even count as acknowledgement.

“John?” Sherlock smoothed down a patch of blond hair sticking out at angles from when John had run his fingers through his hair, muttering something about an octopussy. For a man modest and conservative in public displays of his sexuality, he had an odd fascination with octopus genitalia.

The touch went unnoticed in favour of replying to an anonymous question. “What _are_ my favourite Bond movies?”John said, speaking to someone - mostly himself - as he stared, fixated, at the screen. He was not speaking to Sherlock, that was for sure.

Enough. Sherlock would not stand for being cast aside in favour of Bond movies, especially not in his own home.

He snapped the laptop closed and just barely missed sandwiching John’s fingers in the process. It was the fastest John’s hands had ever moved over the keyboard.

“Hey! I was [answering asks!](http://goawaysherlock.tumblr.com/post/69565803937/hey-welcome-to-tumblr-enjoying-your-blog-so-far-i)” John protested, as if that was a reasonable excuse for anything.

Sherlock slid his hands up John’s neck by way of answer, tilting the man’s head up to the ceiling, baring his throat. Much more room to suck and kiss John to distraction. John stopped protesting the moment Sherlock’s mouth latched onto his jugular, leaving a trail of wet, shining marks down his throat.

Some men were not fooled by the same trick twice, but this clearly did not apply to John. Sherlock removed the laptop from John’s legs and placed it upon the floor, out of reach and, far, far, out of mind, while he sucked a bruise onto his skin that meant John would be wearing a scarf for the next week.

John relaxed totally under his lips, submitting to the promise of sex and soft touches. The shudder of his body was pure temptation. Sherlock cupped John’s cheek, stubble scratching his palm, and petted the bags under his eye with a calloused thumb. He took his time in covering John’s neck in his lips, alternating firm presses of sweet kisses with the sharp slide of his teeth over his carotid artery. He wanted to leave his marks all over him, the impressions of his teeth, the blossoming red that would deepen to a pretty purple later on from the strength of his sucking. He would imprint his kisses into John’s skin. He would implant the knowledge of the heat of his breath and wet slide of his lips over a tendon. He wanted John’s skin to absorb the memory of his touch.

John groaned, hands sliding up to bury themselves in Sherlock’s dark hair, encouraging more, forgetting all else.

Sherlock pulled back so that he could look at him. He was rewarded with the sight of John’s face nearly slack in bliss, eyes closed and lashes fluttering, mouth parted in a little ‘O’ to suck in air for the moans that escaped him. Sherlock skimmed his fingers down the edge of John’s jaw, down his throat, teasing the curve of a collarbone. John leaned forward, following the touch. Sherlock closed the distance and kissed him, slow as the trickle of traffic through London streets, until his John was reaching for him again, fingers brushing their way through his curls.

“I believe I have some apologising to do for yesterday,” Sherlock said, his voice deep in his chest. Blue eyes flickered open, as if awakening from a deep and pleasant sleep. And there, there it was: the exact look of amazement that had first captivated him, right from the very start.

Sherlock grinned and dropped to his knees. He slid both hands up John’s thighs, massaging them, before he firmly pushed them apart.

 _“Ah,_ ” John said, puffed out in a little breath of desire, “of course.”

He certainly wasn’t thinking about his blog any more.

Relationships, Sherlock thought, as he reached for the zip on John’s jeans - contrary to long-held beliefs - were actually rather nice.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gifs this chapter are provided by sweet cuties [flamiekitten](http://flamiekitten.tumblr.com) as John, with [anenglishdirector](http://anenglishdirector.tumblr.com) as Sherlock. ;3;

For years Sherlock played the violin only for the most sophisticated of audiences; a tiny, elitist club of music aficionados with a membership of one: himself. His Stradivarius warmed in his hands like a lover, submitting to his strokes and touches, strings singing out pleasure in pure, golden notes. Or, as it sometimes suited his mood, he transformed it into a weapon of psychological torture, making it squeal and shriek like an animal being messily slaughtered by a nervous teenage butcher. The music soothed his busy mind. The noise distracted him. And on occasion the violin simply gave him something to do with his hands - a noble, life-saving purpose in the three hellish weeks when he had quit smoking for the fourth (and likely not final) time.

As with most things that were intensely personal to Sherlock, he had little to no consideration for the opinions of others. As with most things in general, honestly.

That was, of course, until John came along.

John was not a particularly cultured man. Musically speaking, he was completely ignorant. He couldn’t tell Tchaikovsky from Chopin or Beethoven from Brahms, and Sherlock sometimes caught him singing along to Top 40 on the radio. The one time John had gone to see the London Symphony Orchestra he had fallen asleep, a sin so grievous that Sherlock had been treated to a delightful 50 minutes of Jeanette’s righteous fury, as she bore down upon a helplessly trapped John in the entryway of 221B.

But in the first week of their cohabitation, something happened. Sherlock, playing the first movement of Bach’s [_Violin Concerto in A Minor_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4bUCMV2oCE), glanced up to find John looking at him. John had previously been looking at the telly. He was mindlessly fixated upon some crime drama about a fairly competent DCI named Luther, who actually managed to solve his cases on his own. It was such an obvious fiction that it was painful. John was likely going to complain about the violin interfering with his vapid telly programme, and so Sherlock played with even greater determination. He had warned John about his worst habits, after all.

Instead John picked up the remote and pressed the ‘mute’ button.

It was not that John had a good ear for music - he completely missed the out-of-tune note that slipped out in Sherlock’s surprise, which he had been forced to disguise with amateurish vibrato. John could not tell when the pitch was perfect, he could not appreciate a beautifully executed bariolage. But his expression in that moment was something Sherlock had never seen on another person’s face before.

John was enraptured by him.

  
It was Sherlock’s first time playing for an appreciative audience. (His mother did not count, as she had the same effusive praise for him in his early 30's that she had for him at the tender age of 4.) John watched him, leaning forward, chin resting on the palm of his hand. His eyes were wide and Sherlock noticed, not for the first time, how blue they could actually be. His mouth was parted, just slightly.

Sherlock felt the music well up in, pour out of him, flood the room with effortless, fluid grace. He was playing better than he ever had before. His body thrilled with the attention, and the open admiration in John’s face sent a sharp spike of pleasure directly to the dopamine receptors in Sherlock’s brain.

And when he finished, John said, “That was brilliant,” with applause in his voice, and Sherlock said, “Of course,” with perfect nonchalance, and turned away. It wasn’t until he set the violin down that he realised that he was smiling.

 

* * *

 

John had been busy at the clinic lately. Winter brought with it influenza season, as well as an endless stream of runny noses, colicky and feverish babies, adults presenting with vague complaints of “not feeling well”, and the stubborn elderly patients that fought him with each inoculation. The clinic was understaffed, more so than usual, as doctors and nurses had yet to develop immunity to the disgusting illnesses that surrounded them daily. As a result John was shackled to long hours of forced overtime, feet plodding up the stairs to 221B after every shift, arriving home full of boring war stories about other people’s bodily fluids.

John was lying on the sofa, moaning about his shift, as usual. Apparently there had been an encounter involving urine and vomit. It was that kind of a day.

As John launched into yet another tirade about people who did not finish their course of antibiotics and how the human race would all be wiped out by an epidemic of superviruses that we ourselves created, Sherlock picked up his violin and began to play. John quieted to listen.

Sherlock played slowly, coaxingly, breathing in and out in time with John’s breaths until he could feel the fatigue pulling at his own limbs. Initially John watched him intently, but soon his eyes drifted closed, as if to listen more closely in private bliss. Sherlock let him pretend to listen, and every now and then John let out a soft “mm” in agreement to a question never asked.

He repeated the second movement of Bach’s Concerto in G minor twice. Then he lifted his bow cautiously from the strings and watched his flatmate for a minute.

Not so much as an eyelash flicker. Well and truly asleep, then. Quietly, he set down his violin, but something stopped him from immediately turning the camera on John.

According to popular sentiment, the object of one’s affection was meant to resemble some rosy-cheeked cherub when they were asleep. John didn’t. He mostly looked tired.

He looked _exhausted_ , like it was graven into his face and body too deeply to ever be erased. The crinkles of his forehead deepened and his eyes, their luminosity cloaked, sank deep into the shadows under his brow. It was as though life had punched him in the face till it had left permanent marks.

Breath catching, Sherlock snatched up the camera and closed in. Strong, vulnerable, battered--if John could see what he looked like asleep, he would understand he had nothing to fear from any camera.

John’s eyes popped open.

_Well, hell._

“Augh!” Pillow to the face, camera to the eye socket; John had incredible aim and a hell of a throwing arm. Sherlock tumbled backwards over the coffee table to land sprawled on the sofa. The camera landed with unpleasant loudness on the floor--hopefully it wasn’t broken, bloody thing had cost enough--while John shouted, “Damn it, Sherlock, not while I’m sleeping!”

Sherlock picked up the camera and sidled around behind his chair. “What’s wrong with documenting your face while you sleep?” He liked touching John, he liked having John near, but just now John was planting one foot firmly on the leather chair with a throttling kind of look in his eye. Sherlock drew his arm back, just in case John got strategic and went for the camera again. “I _like_ your face when you sleep.”

John paused, aborting the assault he’d been about to launch over the back of the chair. “You watch me sleep?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Of course I do.” There were two available exits with easy access, currently, just in case this was a trap.

“Oh,” John said, voice soft, suddenly not so hellbent on Sherlock’s bloody demise anymore. His thirst for violence melted into a touched surprise that smoothed out his face and made his eyes wide and bright, at once looking very young and almost puppylike. Not that Sherlock would ever mention the latter if he didn’t want the murderous intent to come rushing back.

John dropped to his knees in the seat of the chair. “Why would you do that?” His anger had suddenly fizzled up. He was completely disarmed, and thusly he was disarming. That voice. It was the breathy, wondering voice and the wide-eyed look he turned on Sherlock when he’d made a particularly brilliant deduction, when he solved the case simply by observing the way the suspect tied his shoes.

Sherlock frowned in surprise. “How could I not?” How could he ever willingly miss out on John, laid out vulnerable and open for him? A man with so many defences, with all reserve stripped from his body, naked to his soul for Sherlock alone to see? He leaned in to stroke a tidying fingertip over John’s eyebrow. “You don’t know what you look like in your sleep, John. All careworn and threadbare, like I could unravel you into a pile of thread in my arms. Someone has to make sure you don’t come undone.”

He could never understand why John responded so well to things that weren’t compliments, but when John reached up to pull him down by the back of the neck for a slow, sweet kiss, Sherlock wasn’t about to resist. When they pulled back, John’s eyes flickered open, glowing with soft warmth. “All right. Just...don’t take pictures of me without my knowing again, all right? I don’t like being startled like that.”

Of course. Sherlock nodded with sympathetic understanding. “That explains why you never had a problem with it before.”

“Well, that’s- Hang on, what do you mean, _before?_ ” The gentle grip on his collar suddenly clenched, abusing the poor cotton.

  
Oh. Oops. Sherlock twisted free and backed quickly towards the door. “Actually I have a meeting with Lestrade and I’m running late. ” He snatched scarf and coat in the crook of one arm, camera in the other, and turned to flee out the door. “See you later, John, goodbye!”

“ _Sherlock!_ ”

The hard-used pillow hit the door in his wake.

 

* * *

  

 

 

 

    '

  

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These lovely photos provided by the adorable [emillu](http://emillu.tumblr.com/)!! Her art is as cute as she is ;3;

 

  
 

John was sat at the table, damp and wrapped in his bathrobe, absorbed in his newspaper. Currently, he was head-down in an article with the sordid headline: ‘Mental health chief stalked shop woman who “enchanted” him.’

Sherlock had missed the part where this necessitated performing obscene acts upon a spoon. 

The bowl of the spoon dripped with a thick coating of honey; John’s tongue twirled through it - pink, wet, and mobile. He sucked and lapped carelessly, unaware of the performance he was putting on, or that he could probably get away with charging a viewing fee.

His tongue adhered and rippled against the curve of the spoon, practically fellating it as he sucked, and then pulled away to carefully trace the edge. He drew delicate slow-healing trails through the viscous fluid with just the tip of his tongue, and then caught the resulting drips and drew them back into his mouth. At one point, he simply stuck the spoon in his mouth (his hot, wet mouth), sucking at it hard enough to make the stem waggle, and moaned softly in delight at the sweetness.

He was driving Sherlock _mad._

Sherlock refused to take the blame for this. The things John was doing to that spoon were still illegal in at least 27 counties. Taking photos of _that_ was pure self-preservation.

The snap of the shutter gave him away, of course. When he looked back up from his phone, John was glaring at him, a self-conscious blush spread charmingly across his cheeks. Sherlock stared him down. “You can _not_ hold this time against me, with the show you were just putting on.”

“You had better delete those.”

Like hell. Sherlock clutched his phone protectively to his chest. “And what if I don’t?”

“You do realise,” John said coolly, “that I know where you sleep.” 

Sherlock scowled at him. Honestly. After nearly a week of this, John still hadn’t caught on? Sometimes he really was not all that bright. “You really have no concept of what I’m doing, do you? You haven’t the foggiest idea what I see when I look at you.” He growled in frustration. “Here. Just look at this.” Sherlock glanced down at his phone to unlock it, then thrust it forward.

John leaned away, but his eyes went to it as though magnetised. The screen displayed one of the photos Sherlock had just taken of him, completely immersed in his newspaper, tongue making fluttering love to the puddle of honey on the spoon. His nose wrinkled. “I look like an idiot.” 

“You look fantastic! ” Sherlock snapped, nettled. “What you are is an idiot if you don’t think so. Do you think I would waste days of my time chasing you around with a camera so I could take _bad_ pictures?”

John shrugged, obviously unable to counter that argument. “I honestly thought you were bored, and it’s all been a sort of experiment.”

An experiment. Sherlock drew in a long, slow breath through his nose. Shouting at John for his stupidity would be counter-productive just now. Instead, he carefully placed his mobile on the table, leaned forward as far into John’s space as he could get from where he was standing, and captured John’s eyes. 

“Do you know what I want to do to you right now?” he asked, pitching his voice to a low, authoritative rumble. “Right now, I want to pick you up out of that chair and kiss you breathless. Then, I want to put you on your back, spread out across the table with me standing between your legs while I tug each article of clothing off you, one by one. _Then_ I want to grab your hips and pull you down onto my cock and take you slowly, with your legs wrapped around my waist, until you’re a squirming, sweating mess inventing entire new ranges of sexual sounds with which to express your pleasure and need.”

John stared at him, frozen, the spoon sagging forgotten to the table where it left sticky little puddles of honey. He looked a bit shell-shocked, but his pupils were blown so wide Sherlock thought he could probably see John’s retinas if he just looked closely enough.

Sherlock lifted one hand to nudge his phone back in John’s direction. “ __These photos capture you like that, John, in the very moments that made me so hard in my trousers that I most likely have the imprint of my zip on my cock right now. And you want me to delete them?”

John glanced down at the photo again, still wide-eyed, his flush deepening now, warm upon his cheeks.

Sherlock drifted around the table until he was standing behind John, while John studied himself with new eyes. “Do I need to explain to you,” he whispered, fingers gliding lightly over the back of John’s bare neck, “all the things I can imagine you doing with that mobile little tongue? How that look of absent concentration on your face reminds me of the way you look at me when you’ve forgotten anything else in the world exists? How unguarded your neck and collarbones look in that robe when you keep them covered all the time, so that I could simply walk up behind you to touch,” he trailed his fingertips slowly down the slope of John’s trapezius, “and nibble,” he lipped quickly at the shell of John’s ear, “and then slide it down…”

John swallowed as Sherlock’s fingers slid under the edge of his collar and began to push it open.

Thoroughly distracted, he didn’t notice Sherlock’s other hand coming around his side to grab the honey-coated spoon and bring it around--not until Sherlock began to drizzle a line of honey over the bare curve of his shoulder. He raised his hand to catch at Sherlock’s wrist, and then it slipped away again as Sherlock lowered his head to lap away the trail he’d just made.

John’s face was smooth against him and smelled strongly of cheap aftershave and honey. John’s skin, fresh from the shower, was warm and clean against his tongue, sweetened by the golden glaze. It was everywhere, a sticky film on everything it touched, much like John. 

John moaned, his voice husky with early morning, and tilted his head back to allow Sherlock access, sliding his hand up to curl his fingers in Sherlock’s hair. 

“Do you still want me to delete the photos, John?” Sherlock asked him, words pressed to sticky, sweet skin. He marked the curve of John’s shoulder with a line of wet kisses, scraped his teeth over his collarbone. His hand spread warm on John’s chest, rubbing and exploring. Index and middle finger found a nipple, grazing it delicately before he rolled it between his index finger and thumb.

“I…suppose,” John interrupted himself with a gasp that sounded like, _yes, there_ ,“you’re allowed to keep these.”

“Good.” Sherlock rewarded him with a nip to his throat, a quick pinch to his nipple. 

When John’s head fell back on a sigh, Sherlock claimed his mouth, sucking the nectar from his tongue.

Nape, nipples, and belly button, inner thigh, from the curve of his ankle to that shallow puddle at the base of his spine, Sherlock chased golden trails of honey across John’s golden body for the rest of the morning, till he had him moaning and sticky-sweet all over.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *points at E rating*
> 
> This chapter's art is of course by cutie perfect beekitten [p-chi](http://p-chi.tumblr.com)!!

To his credit, Sherlock actually asked before he shoved the camera into John’s face this time.

  
His method of asking, however, still lacked a certain...consensuality: John was leaning in, halfway to a kiss with his eyes drifting closed and mouth already parting, when Sherlock abruptly plastered a hand over his mouth.

“May I?” Sherlock said, while John stared at him around his thumb, hovering somewhere around baffled and sidling toward furious.

“Hold it right there,” Sherlock said, taking his expression for agreement. “Just like that.”

He was gone in the next moment, and when he returned he had that clicking black monstrosity in his hands.

“All right,” said Sherlock, holding the camera out at arm’s length. “Now go on and kiss me.”

Arriving at the intersection between ‘goddammit’ and ‘fuck no,’ John paused and bit his lip, trying to decide which way to go. The spoon-licking had been one thing. Well, no, it’d been the same thing, really, but it was hard to argue with results like those, even if the very memory of some of the places that tongue had been made his face go a vivid tomato-red.

Kissing Sherlock for a picture, though? He wrinkled up his nose. That was so… He was still adjusting to kissing Sherlock without pictures.

“It’s what couples do, isn’t it?” Sherlock wheedled. “Jeanette still has that photo from last Christmas up on her Facebook, and you never complained about that.”

John shuffled a little guiltily. It was true. Mrs Hudson had taken a picture of them smooching under the mistletoe at the Christmas party last year, just before Jeanette had dumped him for being a better boyfriend to Sherlock than to her (oh, the irony), and John hadn’t put up a fuss about that.

Sherlock’s eyes dipped and slid sideways. Honest hurt feelings, or manipulation? Hell, one didn’t exclude the other. “Is it because it’s me? You’re comfortable being seen kissing a woman, but-”

“No!” Well. Yes. But it wasn’t the way Sherlock made it sound. “I just…” John deflated a bit. It wasn’t that he had a problem dating a man; he wouldn’t give Sherlock up for anything. It was just...different. A kind of different that caught him at unexpected moments and pulled him out of the moment, made him notice and think when he wanted to be sinking down into the joy of being with Sherlock. “Sorry. I suppose I’m still adjusting to this ‘dating a bloke’ thing. It’s not _you,_ Sherlock.” He took a step closer, hand out to cup Sherlock’s cheek. “You’re...well, just look at you. How could I ever be ashamed of you?”

“Oh.” The corners of Sherlock’s lips twitched. Manipulation, then. The dirty sod was enjoying himself. He was probably gauging how much he had to pout before John would start singing his praises. “I can think of many ways.”

John let Sherlock slide an arm around his waist and pull him close. “I’m sure you can,” John said, and they shared a wry smile. Sherlock could think of many things, and none of them were usually any good. “But it’s...really. It’s not you.”

Sherlock looked down at him, sharp pale eyes scanning John’s face, as if he could read every lipsticked kiss that had ever been pressed to John’s mouth, every mascara’d eyelash that had every fluttered against John’s cheek, every rouged cheek that had ever rubbed against his. In moments like this the spectres of girlfriends past hung around John like a cloud of fading perfume. Sherlock hated it. John wasn’t sure whether that was more the reminder that somebody else had got to John first, or resentment at something holding John back from him.

Probably it wasn’t all bad. Maybe they needed something to slow them down a bit, even if John felt a bit lousy that the ‘something’ was his own issues. Left to their own devices, the two of them barrelled into situations head-on, with little regard for life or limb. Relationships were not meant to be acts of terrorism or high-speed pursuits.

Sherlock stroked a thumb through the fine hairs at John’s nape. “You and your self-consciousness again.” Pressed close like this, his voice vibrated through both their chests. Bloody hell. If only John could record _that_ for posterity… “But it can’t be any wonder to you why I’d want a photo of us together.” One long finger slipped under John’s chin to tilt his face up. “Surely I’ve made it clear to you by now that no matter what you think of them, I see much more in any photo of you than you do?”

Oh, yeah. John shivered. The wet touch of Sherlock’s tongue over his body was now graven into his muscle memory. God, the blissed-out look on Sherlock’s face as he had licked honey off John’s trembling stomach. He’d deliberately made his noises as obscene as possible, slurping and sucking and groaning with deep, thoroughly expressed pleasure, and he’d narrated the progress of John’s debauchery as he went, painting a picture with words of how John looked as he got increasingly flushed and damp and lost all physical restraint. Sherlock had reduced John to a writhing mess, just as promised, making high keening noises of such desperation that John couldn’t let himself think about it too much till he was in bed and could have a good wank.

The closest thing John had ever done with a girlfriend was a bland and unappetising experience with chocolate body paint that tasted awful and, once spread, looked even worse.

Sherlock made him feel wild, unrestrained.

And all he wanted was a photo of them kissing. He’d even _asked_ , this time, more or less. John already knew he’d say yes; he just needed to get over feeling ridiculous first.

The way Sherlock was looking at him was certainly helping with that. “Just think of me away over in Germany on a case.” He pressed his cheek to the side of John’s head and spoke into John’s hair, voice dropping to a coaxing purr that rolled through John’s muscle and bone. “Missing you terribly. Opening that photo on my phone to remember just how soft your lips were when I covered them with mine. What you tasted like. How warm and strong and pliant you were in my arms when I held you and bent you backwards in my eagerness.” He swayed illustratively, arching John back a little. John shivered again; he felt Sherlock smile into his hair. Sherlock’s lips brushed John’s ear as he tilted his head to murmur, “And then what we did next, after I put down the camera.”

John’s huff was a little breathless. “Fine. Fine, but if you ever show it to anybody else, I’ll tell Mrs Hudson what _actually_ happened to her cuisinart.”

He waited, patient in the half-circle of Sherlock’s arm, till Sherlock had the camera held up and positioned the way he wanted it. Putting his hands on Sherlock’s shoulders for stability, with Sherlock’s hand a steadying pressure at the small of his back, he went up on tip-toe for a sweet, lingering brush of lips. He could feel himself blushing again, but that was all right. It felt good to kiss Sherlock like this, in front of a ‘witness.’ In the camera’s steady black eye, they belonged to each other. It was a thrilling sort of knowledge.

The kiss was soft and nearly shy, like the first few that they had shared. That had surprised John, the first time; he had always expected kissing another man to be monumentally different and strange. He’d braced for everything he knew about himself to shatter. He’d expected to be left with broken pieces of his old identity at his feet. It had almost been more of a shock when it had turned out to be a simple kiss. No fanfare had gone off afterwards, no confetti or banner dropping from the ceiling to declare, “ _CONGRATULATIONS! You like blokes now!_ ”

In reality, it wasn’t all that different from kissing a woman, although the height difference was admittedly new - the tallest woman John had ever dated had been 5’8”. Aside from the craning, the only true difference was that when John opened his eyes, it was Sherlock blinking lazily down at him. John felt revealed under that gaze. It was a little like the first time they had met, when Sherlock could tell everything about him from a glance. John had wanted to hide from it and bask in it all at once. Kissing Sherlock, with his soft, enthusiastic, supernaturally unchapped lips, made a warmth unfurl in John’s chest, made his breath catch with excitement. Most of all, it had made him want to do it again.

The shutter went off, and John relaxed. The kiss had been sweet and brief. But before he could get his feet flat on the floor, the hand at his back was knocking him off-balance, pushing him into Sherlock’s body and pinning him close while Sherlock curled in over him to capture his mouth in another, fiercer kiss. The searing, toe-curling possessive force of it pushed John’s head back, arched his whole body into it till he had to cling to Sherlock to stay upright.

Being off balance like this left him breathless and dizzy, stripped of control and left dependent for stability. Then the old fighting instinct kicked in, to push Sherlock off and regain control, scold him for cheating _again_. But there were no more clicks of the shutter, only Sherlock’s heavy, shaky exhale against John’s face as though he’d been swept up just as thoroughly as John had. John moaned under those peremptory lips, around the imperious tongue surging in to fill John’s mouth. It was intoxicating to be wanted so much. His own need rose up in him, demanding. John gripped Sherlock’s shoulders to pull himself tighter and opened his mouth wider to him, inviting Sherlock into him as deeply as he wanted to go.

And then he was stumbling backwards, pushed against the wall by the kitchen door. The bite of the camera against his back vanished; he heard the thump of it being set on one of the shelves. Their mouths parted briefly, long enough for John to look up into Sherlock’s face and see the dark take over Sherlock’s eyes, his full lips curled back from his teeth like...something feral and gorgeous. Oh. Sherlock’s hands seemed to engulf his wrists, locking almost painfully tight upon them, forcing John’s hands back against the wall. John’s stomach clenched with the thrill of capture. Another ferocious kiss, and John lost the floor, hoisted up off his feet between Sherlock and the wall. Without thinking, he wrapped his legs around Sherlock’s waist and locked them together, all too eager for the feel of Sherlock against him.

Pressed so tight to Sherlock that it made his sternum ache, sucking in little gasps of air when a shift of the head or brief parting of lips created space for it, John realised dimly that no one had ever kissed him like this, never clutched him so tight that he could feel the blood throb in their veins like their pulses had merged. He tugged at his wrists, still pinned to the wall as if Sherlock was afraid he might lose his mind and decide to leave. “Mmph, _hair_ ,” he managed. After a moment, Sherlock let him loose to lock his fingers into those taunting curls.

The wall was good. The wall was fine. John could have stayed there happily kissing Sherlock until neither of them could hold themselves up anymore. Sherlock seemed to have another idea. His hands bit hard into John’s thighs and then gravity up-ended for a heartbeat as they spun and tumbled into the sofa. John was still gaping up at the smiley face, trying to reassure himself that up and down still worked, when Sherlock managed to scramble up to his knees to attack John’s clothes. The jumper went up and then stuck there; John clawed at it while his jeans got pulled down, with rough bone-jarring yanks like he was some kind of prey animal Sherlock was trying to shake into submission.

One clever hand dove down John’s Y-fronts to fondle the bulge of his cock. John stopped struggling with the tangle of his shirt so he could drop his head back against the cushion and groan. His own arousal surprised him with its intensity. God, he was so hard, it felt like he’d been waiting for days for this. It felt like he’d been waiting a lifetime to be touched like this. Sherlock’s hand stroked down his shaft, and then on to squeeze and tug at his balls, one finger sliding back behind them to stroke his perineum.

“God! If you’re going to do that-” He reached down to yank at his own pants, but Sherlock was in the way, between his legs.

John poked at him with one foot, but Sherlock only grinned and hooked an arm under one of his knees. “Trust me, John. I know what I’m doing.”

John laughed. “Now I know I’m worri--” Sherlock cut him off mid-snark, shoving his knee up and to the side to deposit his lower legs on the back of the sofa. The other leg went with it, both of them caught in the knot his trousers had formed around his thighs.

John had no leverage like this. He felt like he’d just been swaddled, or maybe scooped up in a net. He grabbed for the back of the sofa, intending to pull himself out of his awkward position, but Sherlock casually batted his hand away. Though he pulled at his trousers a bit more, the big git made no attempt to remove them. John kicked his legs in protest, but he might as well have been hobbled; his rucked-up jeans all but bound him at the knees.

Caught with his pants down and his arse out, too tangled up to save himself, on the living room sofa in full view of God and Sherlock and...well, nobody else really, but it was the principle of the thing. It should’ve been humiliating, and his cheeks burned with the knowledge of it, but the butterflies in his stomach were fluttering a path right down to his cock.

Sherlock grinned at him--he could probably feel John’s cock jump, the prick--and ran a suggestive hand down the back of his thigh and over his arse.

It drove the air from John’s lungs like a piledriver. They’d barely done so much as a blowjob outside of the bedroom. An image hit John of what they’d look like, fucking half-naked on the sofa like this, John twisted round and tied up in his own clothes… Hung panting between desire and uncertainty, he caught one of Sherlock’s wrists and held his eyes.

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, and lifted one hand away to start unbuttoning his shirt. Yeah, all right, hesitation could sod off. John reached greedily for that creamy white skin and let Sherlock do whatever the hell he had in mind.

Satisfied that John would stay where he’d put him, Sherlock started rooting around between the sofa cushions for something. John entertained himself with pinching and stroking at Sherlock’s abs and nipples while he watched, enjoying the hisses and gasps it won him. “Is now really the time when you desperately need to find the remote?” he asked.

“I’m not looking for...ah… Yes!” Sherlock brandished a small tube of lube in triumph, then popped it open.

John blinked at it. When and why did he… No, best not to ask.

Sherlock pushed John’s thigh up a bit higher, and ran a cool, slippery finger down along his taint into the cleft of his buttocks. When John gasped and squirmed, Sherlock pushed down to keep him in place, and then began to press gently against his entrance, over and over, in a soothingly erotic rhythm that quickly made John want him inside. He flexed his hips. “Come on, Jesus, stop fucking around!”

“Now that’s an interesting term of endearment,” Sherlock smirked. John could have hit him, awkward position be damned, but then Sherlock shifted them again. He tucked John’s legs more securely up to the side so that they caught at his shoulder and the top of the sofa, and, finally, bloody _finally,_ his finger pushed inside, gliding easily on lube. John keened with the feel of it; no relief, just a tease. Just one finger and it wasn’t nearly enough.

Sherlock slid his finger in and out of John, taking his time, making John hyper-aware of his hole, sensitizing the nerves around his entrance and the bump of his prostate with careful, slow strokes. John fisted a hand in his own hair and tried to keep from flying to pieces.

The first time they’d had penetrative sex, Sherlock had been careful and slow with him like this, lighting him up nerve by nerve till John’s entire body was a single yearning vibration of greed. Now his stare was setting John on fire too, penetrating him as thoroughly as his touch, dissecting every breath, every twitch of his cock, the flex and flutter of his stomach muscles as John fought to swallow his moans.

John had never wanted anything like this before Sherlock, not even that time in uni when one of his more exciting girlfriends had suggested it. Any sort of penetration had seemed unmasculine and wrong. Jesus, what had he been missing out on? When Sherlock pushed a second finger into him, John didn’t feel any less of a man. He just felt like a man whose blood rushed with pleasure and the powerful intimacy of having someone else inside him.

Being penetrated and stretched like this made him vividly aware of a part of his body that felt private and dirty. The soft pads of Sherlock’s fingers moved from his prostate to touch everywhere else inside of him, opening him up as they massaged and explored. He felt his throat vibrate with some kind of noise that made Sherlock laugh, low and smooth.

It was still new enough to startle him. Every time brought back the first time, with Sherlock’s long, deceptively big fingers inside of him, dextrous violinist’s fingers playing him, while John squeezed his eyes shut and writhed and panted on the bed, wanting to close his legs, wanting to keep some of his dignity and the self-control that was being stripped from him till he felt more naked than he’d known was possible.

He’d been so grateful, then, for the secrecy of their room in the dark. But now, able to see Sherlock’s breathtaking face in the light of their living room, he wondered how much he’d missed. The way Sherlock’s mouth went slack with pleasure at the sight of his own fingers moving in and out of John, the flare of his fine nostrils at the scent of musk and sweat that suffused the air around them, the raw intensity of having _those eyes_ turned solely upon him. John fought back a sob of lust. It was like Sherlock was peeling him down into the sheets of a CT scan.

“More,” he demanded, desperation scraping in his throat. Teeth bared and head thrown back, he undulated for Sherlock, riding his fingers to underscore the need behind his demand.

Sherlock’s eyes snapped up with that rare, beautiful look of wonder that John got to see when he’d done something truly unexpected. He glanced with an uncertain frown between John’s face, probably red with more need than he’d ever felt in his life, to his hole, gripping hungrily at the two fingers that were managing to only tease him with the promise of being filled. He was this close to begging for Sherlock’s cock like one of those porn videos he’d watched in uni between girlfriends.

John dropped his head back on the cushion and stared at the ceiling, unable to actually look Sherlock in the eyes with what he was about to say. “Sherlock, either stick another finger in or fuck me, because I’m losing my mind here, and I really can’t wait.”

“My apologies, John.” Sherlock leaned down over him to press a kiss to a strip of John’s exposed stomach, so the words rumbled against John’s skin. He didn’t sound apologetic. He mostly sounded smug. Another finger wormed its way inside him and pressed right into his prostate. “I’ve never heard you beg like this before.”

John whimpered as he felt Sherlock’s fingers pull back, and then thrust in again, sending an electric shock of stimulation through his whole body. Fluid spurted from his dick in response, hard and completely untouched.

Sherlock scraped his teeth against the trembling skin of his stomach. “I think I’ll need to hear you say it again.”

Any other time, John would have distracted Sherlock with a kiss and gone down roads more sexually conventional, but two fingers rubbing the outline of his gland and the third lightly grazing the surface had him leaking like a schoolboy. “Sherlock, it’s not enough. Just fuck me already, _please_.”

The bastard laughed and dropped another kiss to his stomach. “Since you asked so nicely.”

John held his breath as he felt Sherlock’s dick nudge and bump at his entrance, releasing it in a long, low moan of relief when it finally breached him. That unfamiliar stretch, the slow insistent burn of penetration; being filled was like cold water on a sweltering day, layered with painkillers rubbing out a bone-deep ache. Sherlock moved slowly inside him, deep and luxurious. John could feel every inch as it filled him, and then again as Sherlock pulled out, only to push back in. He could barely move with Sherlock’s weight holding him practically folded in half, lower body twisted to the side, and still it felt so good that it left him panting for it, squirming uselessly in place.

Sherlock chuckled at John’s attempts to move his hips, to increase the friction and speed. “You’re at my mercy like this.” To illustrate, he shifted his hips, side to side and in little circles. John whined, able only to lie there and take it. Heat flooded him at the thought, his prick twitching where it lay, so hard that it rested on his stomach. His face reddened at how much it turned him on.

Of course Sherlock saw it too. Eyes narrowed with calculation, he reached up to stroke a thumb over one of John’s nipples, already pink and peaked with arousal. John arched into the touch, and then gasped as Sherlock leaned down to take the other nipple into his mouth, flicking over and over it with his tongue. “Oh,” John breathed, the touch so hot and wet, his nipple stiff in Sherlock’s mouth, “Oh, more of that.”

The three points of pleasure lit up inside his brain like a Christmas tree. John writhed freely under Sherlock’s weight, the burn and squirm of humiliation in his stomach mingling with the heat of his desire. It was all just pure molten arousal, in the end, and Sherlock was the one doing this to him. Caught off-guard, he yelped when Sherlock suddenly pinched his nipple hard, and the pleasure turned into an equally bright spike of sensuous pain. Looking down, he caught Sherlock’s eyes fixed upon him, his gaze unflinching and unabashedly lustful. Sherlock hummed against his chest with a little smile, and nibbled ever so gently at the nipple he still had in his mouth.

Every slow, powerful stroke of his cock drove the breath from John. There was something sublime in being forced to breathe with the rhythm of Sherlock taking him. As Sherlock sped up, the thrusts came faster, harder, their bodies smacking together. John found himself struggling for enough air. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe properly, while Sherlock played with John’s body however he wanted; the sharp awareness of his own helplessness seemed to make his sense of everything else keener. Sherlock’s cock felt bigger and more vibrant inside him than it ever had before, every rub against his prostate flashed brighter, each thrust drove him closer to the precipice of orgasm. John moaned and writhed, he raked his hands over the backs of Sherlock’s shoulders and keened with desire for _more_. More of Sherlock’s cock, more of his force pinning John down to the sofa, more of whatever Sherlock wanted to give him.

Sherlock pushed away from John’s body to hover over him, up on his arms for better leverage. His hair was a chaotic cloud and his face was flushed pink with the force of his arousal, with a crease of concentration between his brows and that lush lower lip caught intently between his teeth. He was the most glorious, wild thing John had ever seen. The idea that it was all because of _him_ , all for him, made his cock leak and his balls quiver.

“Sherlock.” John’s voice was thinned out with need, barely able to get enough air to form words. “Please. Touch me.”

“Touch.” Sherlock gasped, carried away by his own pleasure. The word was almost lost in their resounding groans when Sherlock drove into him with the full force of his body weight. “Touch yourself. I want to see you.”

John scrabbled to obey, letting out something close to a sob as he gave himself a good squeeze. His cock was hot and iron-hard, his hand sliding on the abundant lubrication of his precum. It was positively humiliating how completely his body had spun out of his control. He’d never leaked this much in his life. He could practically hear the slick squelch of his fist, dribbling more with each stroke of Sherlock’s cock inside him.

With each thrust, Sherlock’s lower abdomen brushed against John’s knuckles. He was so close now, fucking his own fist frantically in time to Sherlock’s cock fucking his hole, twin pleasures vibrating through him. He reached with his other hand down to where Sherlock had stretched him open and was moving in and out. He could feel everything there: the touch of his own fingers against his stretched-open rim, the solidity of Sherlock’s cock moving inside him. The sense of connection ripped through him, and, seizing up with pleasure he came with a shout, ribbons of come painting both their stomachs, his body rippling around Sherlock to shoot cascades of pleasure through him.

John was still riding out the crest of his orgasm when Sherlock shuddered heavily and gave a throaty groan as he came. Liquid heat flooded the depths of John’s body, wet and warm, almost silken against his sensitised insides. John sighed; the sensation of Sherlock’s semen inside him was intensely erotic, every time. It still surprised him how much he liked it.

Sherlock pulled out of him carefully, still breathing heavily. He helped John lower his legs down to a more comfortable position, thank god. John wasn’t sure his joints still worked. They could worry about the potential mess on the sofa later. For now, he reached up and pulled Sherlock down to him, wanting to feel their bodies together as long as possible before prickly heat and stickiness drove them both up to seek cleaning. Practically purring with happiness, Sherlock kissed him on the forehead and stuffed his nose under John’s ear.

They lay together, just the two of them; complete in their togetherness, euphoric in their completion. No room for ghosts between them. For the first time in months, John’s mind was a quiet and comfortable place.

“Mine,” Sherlock mumbled, the word humid against John’s neck.

John let out a soft puff of laughter. He tightened his arms around Sherlock, holding him close.

“Yeah,” he agreed. 

 

* * *

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art for this chapter provided by the inordinately talented [practicefortheheart](http://practicefortheheart.tumblr.com/).
> 
> As a reminder, [Sherlock's blog](http://acameraobscure.tumblr.com) and [John's blog](http://goawaysherlock.tumblr.com).

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Sherlock spent the next couple of days on cloud nine. When Lestrade called him to a crime scene, he was so persistently unantagonistic to Donovan and so agreeable to Lestrade’s requests for explanations that Lestrade followed him the entire time he was on site, under the assumption that he _had_ to be planning something.

Which was uncommonly perceptive of Lestrade, since he was, but it had nothing to do with the police.

 

The day after Sherlock had solved Lestrade’s latest little puzzle, he swanned into the living room, dropped into his chair and said to the air, “I want you to pose nude for me.”

Over on the sofa, John looked up from his work applying leather conditioner into his best boots, favourite belt and pocket holster. “You what.”

“Pose nude for me, John.” Sherlock rolled his head in John’s direction. “It’ll be good for you! Freeing.” He leered at the way John tugged at his shirt collar, as if he could wrap himself up anymore than he already was in his layers of cotton and wool. “It’s not as though I haven’t seen it all before.”

“Yes, but you haven’t taken a picture of it.” John glowered at him. “Those things have a way of getting on the internet.”

“I would never put it on the internet,” Sherlock lied easily. Well, he certainly wouldn’t flash it around; those were _his_ pictures. He liked archiving them, sorting them, cataloguing them all for his own edification. There was a part of him that enjoyed organisation. The fact that he enjoyed showing off was barely a consideration.

He catapulted himself to his feet and strode over to sit on the coffee table, only a foot or two from John. With a glance up through his eyelashes, he ran fingertips up the inner seam of John’s jeans. “It’s worked out for you so far, hasn’t it?”

John put his book down. He ran his tongue over his lips while Sherlock watched with great interest. “That’s true.”

Sherlock flicked the button of John’s fly. “Don’t you want to see what would happen this time?”

Despite John’s attempt at nonchalance, there was no mistaking that sharp intake of breath. Sherlock had to fight back a grin; John looked adorable when he got shifty. His eyes were too large to make furtiveness look anything but comical. “What are you proposing?”

“Nothing explicit or intense,” Sherlock assured him. “I just need you to see yourself. Really see yourself.” He pointedly ran his eyes over John’s form, with a smirk for the tightness that was quickly developing in John’s jeans. “You’re extraordinary, John, and you still have no idea what you look like.”

John pursed his lips, exhaling through his nose. The faintest bit of hesitation; it was clearly for show. His cheeks had begun to colour pink, his eyes gone heavy-lidded. He licked his lips again. “Can I… Can I work up to it?” he finally asked.

In answer to Sherlock’s cocked eyebrow, John added quickly, “Shirtless. I can do shirtless. And then...we’ll see. No promises for now.”

Sherlock smiled. Victory.

 

* * *

 

“Just sit there on the bed,” Sherlock directed.

John did as he was bid, dropping down onto the edge with an awkward expression while Sherlock fiddled with the camera. “Um, what do you want me to do?”

“Whatever you like. Pretend the camera isn’t there. Relax. There’s no one here but me. And If you don’t like it, we can have a do-over.”

John nodded, face pinched, and stared at his sock feet as if they might give him the answer.

After a few seconds of that hangdog expression, Sherlock took pity. He set the camera down on his chest of drawers, stepped forward to drop to his knees between John’s legs, and pulled him down into a slow, sensuous kiss.

Tension melted from John’s body, and he reached up to cup Sherlock’s jaw. His fingers were light on Sherlock’s skin, applying barely any pressure. He touched Sherlock with the same careful hands that stitched skin and set bone, as if this were the most delicate of operations. Being allowed to touch so intimately was still new to John.

He wasn’t the only one who felt that awe. Sherlock's kiss was full of the wonder that he still had for this, in every press of lips amazement that John was his to touch, his to have; in every touch of tongue a discovery. He squeezed and rubbed John's body, enjoying the realness of him, the solid firmness of his thighs, the lush curve of his arse; all this was his, to reach for whenever he wanted. John warmed and softened under his hands, making little noises into the kiss that made Sherlock want to press into him and draw out more. His breath was hot against Sherlock’s wet lips when he drew back for breath. With each parting, John grew more urgent, sucking Sherlock’s bottom lip and the tip of his tongue, while Sherlock rubbed up and down his inner thighs. When they finally separated for air, Sherlock smiled and reached to undo the button of John’s fly...then stood and backed away.

John’s eyes took a second to focus properly on him. “What…?”

“Show me how you feel now, John,” Sherlock purred. “Let your body show me what it wants.”

For another moment, John stared at him as if Sherlock had begun speaking in very rapid French. Then his lashes fell to veil his eyes, his lips parted, and something indefinably alluring happened to his posture.

He _got it._ Sherlock wanted to jump in a circle, but he had to grab for his camera as John licked his lips and grabbed for the hem of his shirt.

Head shyly down, enchanting embarrassment on his features, John treated Sherlock to a slow strip-tease, revealing the strong, weathered beauty of his body inch by inch as he pulled his shirt off. Soft and rounded in some places, functionally muscular in others, he wasn’t the artistic ideal of a well-sculpted man, but a life’s worth of chances taken and hardships endured were carved into his body, and they made him a masterwork. Sherlock wanted to drop the camera and gather him up in handfuls.

The padded muscle of his belly tightened and flexed when he stretched, and Sherlock had had enough of this all-looking-but-no-touching business. He tossed the camera on the bed and followed after, the two of them rolling together over the sheets while John laughed at Sherlock’s eagerness.

Sherlock chose his position behind John, John leaned his head back and settled in with a pleased sigh. Sherlock wrapped him in his arms, one hand working into his pants to knead at his cock while the other stroked up John’s stomach to catch his nipple. The little nub hardened quickly under the coy brush of a thumb, as if John’s body was asking for more of Sherlock’s touch. Sherlock pressed his nose into John’s neck, pleased.

“You liked this last time,” he murmured, enjoying John’s little shiver as Sherlock rolled and flicked at the nipple in between his fingers. “Shall we find out just how much? What I can make you do with the right stimulation?”

John’s eyes slid sideways, a dark blur of blue through his eyelashes. Sherlock brushed at the gold fuzz with the tip of his nose and grinned at John’s little huff of laughter.

He worked John’s body, rolling and pinching, squeezing and stroking, till he had John squirming in his lap, caught pleasantly between the hand at his nipple and the one in his pants. A lapful of John was a very nice thing to have, Sherlock reflected as that sweet arse rubbed thoughtlessly against his erection. It was impossible to resist grinding up against it, rutting against that lovely firm curve while John wriggled for him, sinking deeper and deeper into the flood of pleasure Sherlock gave him. .

How he wanted to peel John open, layer by layer, wanted to dissect and discover him. He wanted to assail him with pleasure until he lost all composure and fell asunder in Sherlock’s arms; wanted to wrack him with sensation until Sherlock was the singular star in his universe. A harder pinch to John’s nipple awarded Sherlock with a little squeak of pain John couldn’t quite hold back; but he didn’t flinch or try to escape, and Sherlock sucked in his breath with realization.

Eager to test his hypothesis, he twisted at the little nub. John responded with a hiss of indrawn breath and another squirm.

“Do you like that, John?” he breathed into John’s ear. John shook his head, but squirmed more with another tugging pinch and a taunting squeeze to his cock. “You do, don’t you?” He did; Sherlock could feel it in the anticipatory tension of his body. He moved over to give the other side the same thorough treatment, and admired the way John quivered, suspended between the quick shifts of pleasure and pain sparking through the sensitive erogenous zone of his nipples.

“I...ah!” John arched his chest out more in response to the firm squeeze Sherlock gave his nipple on that side. Pain, pleasure and uncertainty melded together beautifully in his expression. He could claim he didn’t like this--and Sherlock wouldn’t argue with him just yet, if John needed time to get used to the idea--but his body told Sherlock the truth.

All at once, he let John go and pulled back.

The lack of John made his arms ache and left his front cold, but it was worth it to watch the sudden deprivation rip through John’s frame. He twisted around to look at Sherlock, puzzled betrayal shining magnificently in his eyes.

Sherlock pounced, pushing John down on his back to loom smugly over him. Oh yes, he looked agreeably mussed; his eyes were even darker than usual, and a lovely dusky flush lay across his cheeks. Sherlock smiled at him and lowered his mouth to the little pink bud he’d so far tormented only with his fingers.

John made an abortive sound, as though he’d been about to protest and then thought better of it. Instead, he reached up to stroke a hand up Sherlock’s neck--John was always so fascinated with Sherlock’s neck--while Sherlock licked soothingly at his abused flesh.

And then he bit him.

John yelped and bucked, his hand fisting painfully into Sherlock’s hair. Growling his pleasure at the show of force, Sherlock resisted the pull and moved over to the other one. John cried out again as Sherlock applied teeth, but there was a sensual, falling note of bliss in his voice, and the way he arched, chest and then hips, up against Sherlock had nothing to do with resistance.

“Responsive,” Sherlock purred in approval against his chest, and smiled again at the vibration of John’s catch of breath. Oh, yes, John could be more responsive than either of them had even imagined. A shudder shook his body as he was almost overwhelmed with the desire to push, invade and plunder until he’d explored John’s full potential.

But not today. John wasn’t ready yet. Transported by the possibilities that lay in wait for them, Sherlock pushed up to place a soft kiss on John’s lips, and took note of the hazed, lost look in his eyes. Some confusion, of course, but he could also see that, dazed and overwhelmed, John was beginning to sink into his rapture.

“Yes, John, just like that,” he whispered, stroking his hair. It took a little of the tension out of his face, and the haze got just that much deeper. “Feel everything I do to you. Surrender to it.”

It was, of course, at that moment that Sherlock’s mobile went off.

If it hadn’t been Lestrade’s beep, he wouldn’t even have reached for it. When he glanced at the screen, it read, “Man from Barcelona. Only speaks Russian. Can’t remember own name. Come at once.”

Sherlock bit his lip. Torn between temptations, he looked over at John, who’d rolled up onto one elbow to watch him as suspiciously as he could manage in his sensory fog.

"Don't tell me it's a case," John groaned.  Under his breath, he referred to DI Lestrade with a few choice phrases, which may or may not have included 'sodding cockblock' among them.  

Sherlock smiled at him, rueful and affectionate.  “Make it up to you in Barcelona."


End file.
